


Get A Clue

by QZB



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/F, If you've never played the Clue board game you're missing out, Michael is here too he's just eternally sleepy, References to Clue | Cluedo, Soft Family Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 04:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20419832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QZB/pseuds/QZB
Summary: Some days are good. Some days are bad. Some days you get accused of murder by your own son.For JJ today is that last one.





	Get A Clue

JJ hoists a sleeping Michael onto her shoulder, rubbing his back as he stirs slightly before he nuzzles into her neck, breathing softly. She shuts the car door quietly, before walking up the steps to her house. As she walks through the foyer, she notices that nearly every light in the house is on, all the windows illuminated.

She makes a mental note to tell Emily to turn them all off, it’s a huge waste of electricity.

As she walks into the house, softly shutting the door with her back foot and heading towards the living room, she sees shadows and hears voices filter out.

She picks up on Henry’s voice first and smiles.

“The perpetrator of this heinous crime is not nearly as clever as they think they are.”

She peaks into the room just in time to hear Emily respond with a very pointed, “And how do you figure that, Professor?”

Henry is standing at the front of the room, purple baseball cap and purple sweater on, with a clipboard in hand,gesturing wildly to clues on a board as he speaks.

“Well, Mrs. Peacock, it was rather simple, really. I just had to look at the clues.”

JJ’s eyebrows rise further as she takes in the sight of her living room. It looks, well, like a murder scene. 

There’s a bundle of pillows with red yarn all over it in a vaguely human shape in a chair by the bookcase. A large whiteboard that usually resides in her office is propped up against the television and has photos taped across the screen with Henry’s chicken scratch handwriting scrawled all over it in purple marker. When she looks closer she can see Emily’s scrunched cursive in blue marker alongside Henry’s scrawl. 

In the center of the room is a Clue game board, with game pieces and sticky notes scattered all over it. There are other items out of place in the room, too - a wrench from the garage, a Nerf gun from Henry’s room, a foam sword from Michael’s, and a glass of bright orange liquid on the fireplace.

“You see, the killer left a partial clue in each room of the house. It was just a matter of putting it all together. First, in the dining room, the only missing any liquid was the orange Fanta. Now that on it’s own isn’t significant but, by the time the group was in the dining room, the murder had already occurred. Everyone else was subconsciously staying away from soda, because they thought it was what had killed Mr. Body. I mean they were right, the murder weapon was definitely the soda, but only the killer and their accomplice  _ truly _ knew. They knew that they were okay to drink orange Fanta because they had already committed the crime.”

Henry gestures to the orange soda on the fireplace using a ruler, JJ quietly applauds him for his good work, but he’s far from finished. He was just getting started. 

“In this very room, the parlor, is where the murder actually occurred, much earlier than anyone else suspected. You see, I thought the murder occurred elsewhere and Mr. Body’s final actions where to stumble into the parlor to access the phone. But then it occurred to me: his watch!”

“The watch?”

JJ steps further into the room, marveling at how Henry and Emily are completely enraptured in their own little world. She softly sets Michael down in a chair, the young boy still fast asleep.

“Yes, it was stopped exactly at 3:30 pm this afternoon. I reckon Mr. Body bashed it against the fireplace as he fell, thus stopping it at the exact time of his death. Everyone knew the phones in the house weren’t working, because when Mr. Green tried to call for pizza at lunch time, the phone didn’t work. So, he couldn’t have been going for the phone, he knew that was hopeless. The watch is the only clue from the parlor.” 

Henry pulls a pool noodle that JJ assumes to be the  _ victim’s _ arm from the mass of pillows. On the  _ arm _ is a watch, with a broken face that reads exactly 3:30, just like Henry had said.

“Okay, then pray tell, Professor, who is the killer?” 

Emily is perched on the arm of the couch, dressed in a blue flannel that’s at least two sizes too big. She, too, is holding a clipboard and from JJ’s location at the back of the room, she can see cursive scrunched and written in every direction across the sheet, filling the page.

“The killer is someone nobody has suspected, someone who didn’t even seem to be here during the crime itself. You see, the killer only needed to come into the parlor to commit their dastardly deed. They only needed to come into contact with Mr. Body. So, who among us wasn’t seen during the day? That’s the central question that allowed me to crack this case. The killer is,” Henry pauses for dramatic effect before whipping around, pointing right at JJ with the ruler. 

“Miss Scarlett in the parlor, with the orange Fanta!”

She raises her hands in surrender before looking down and realizing she is actually wearing a red jacket, so it does fit. “I can’t believe you accused me of murder while I was gone, Emily! It’s only been three days, and apparently this house has turned into a crime scene.”

Emily smiles as she pads across the room to the safe, opening it up and removing a manila envelope. “Technically, I didn’t accuse you of murder, Henry did.”

Henry runs up to hug her. “Hey momma! Emily set up a real life game of Clue, how cool is that?!”

“I can see that! Are you sure your guess is correct?” She hugs him back as Emily opens up the manila envelope and pulls out a single sheet of paper.

“I, honestly, can’t believe you solved this one.” Emily flips the page around so they can all see what it says in simple block letters:

**Miss Scarlett**

**Poison**

**The Parlor**

Henry throws his hands up in victory. “I WIN!”

\---

Hours later, after both boys have been put to bed, JJ asks the question that’s been on her mind since she came home to find her wife and eldest son in a life-sized game of Clue.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Hmm?” Emily emerges from the bathroom, toweling her hair dry, and sits down on the bed where JJ has “ _ witness statements” _ from the game spread out.

“Why’d you do it? I mean, Henry would have been happy just having a movie marathon, but this,” she picks up a  _ witness statement _ , “is absolutely incredible. Why?”

“I thought it’d be fun. The idea wasn’t all me. I asked Reid for ideas on what to do this weekend and he suggested board games and going to see Murder on the Orient Express. I guess the idea just kinda took me, and I wrote it all up Friday during work, then had Reid come over while we were at the movie to set everything up on Saturday,” Emily explains with a shrug. 

“We spent all of Saturday rolling dice, uncovering clues in each room, and going over witness statements. I think he knew who it was pretty early on, but he waited for you to get home so he could be dramatic.”

JJ drapes herself around Emily’s shoulders, kissing her cheek. “Of course he did.”

“He’s a little Hercule Poirot in the making.” Emily smiles as she stretches to turn off the lamp, plunging the bedroom into darkness.

They’re silent for a while before JJ speaks up again, so softly she thinks Emily might have missed it, “Thank you.”

Emily rolls over and gives her a quizzical look. “For what? I just had a fun weekend with Henry. If anything, you should be annoyed with me for leaving such a mess in the living room, which Henry and I will totally clean up tomorrow.”

That statement draws a smile out of the blonde. “Do I even need to tell you the thing about the lights?”

“I was about to send Henry to turn them all off before he started his accusation.”

“Uh huh, likely story.”

JJ rests her head over Emily’s heart and is lulled into sleep by the steady  _ da dum _ of the beat. 

She vaguely hears, “what were you thanking me for?” but it’s quickly forgotten as she drifts into sleep.

\---

The next morning, JJ wakes up not to her alarm, but to loud giggling. A quick glance at the clock reveals the time to be 6:45 a.m., normally too early for the boys to be awake.

She gets up, throwing on Emily’s oversized blue flannel from last night and padding into the kitchen to see Emily making pancakes. Michael appears to be dozing in his chair, but Henry is wide awake and laughing at  _ Tom and Jerry _ reruns. 

“Henry, I forgot to ask you this weekend, how did you like the movie? You had read the book before right?” Emily asks, concentrating on pancakes but glancing over her shoulder at the blonde boy.

“Yeah! It’s one of the books Spencer got me to read on the trips down to Dad’s. I liked the book more than the movie, because the movie skipped on a lot of what the book leaned on for Poirot to actually solve the crime.” Henry gestures as he talks, a trait that Emily insists he learned from her.

“Oh yeah?”

“In the book, most of Poirot’s mystery solving is done in the meals he has with the doctor and the constable. In the movie, he just twirled his mustache a lot.” Henry looks to his left, sees his mother, and grins broadly.

“Twirling your mustache isn’t how you solve crimes?” JJ asks, hugging Henry and Michael as she walks into the kitchen.

Emily turns around with a plate of pancakes, giving JJ a kiss on the cheek. “You’re not supposed to be up yet.”

“The Great Detective over here woke me up with all his giggling.”

Henry only looks slightly guilty as he reaches for a pancake.

Emily stops him and turns back to the counter with for one last thing.

“For the great detective, I thought a special breakfast was in order.” She turns back around to reveal two more pancakes in the shape of a question mark and a magnifying glass. She sets them in front of Henry. 

“Good job on the case this weekend.”

\---

Later, when they’ve dropped the boys off at school and are finally exiting the car in the Quantico parking garage, JJ remembers that she never answered Emily from the night before.

“I wanted to thank you for being so good with them.” She says during the elevator ride to the sixth floor. “You really just went all in with them,and Michael obviously loves you, but Henry is really coming out of his shell too, so thank you.”

“You’re thanking me for doing what any good step-parent would do?”

“Yeah, because you’re you, and that makes it special.”

“When have I ever half-assed anything, Jayje?”

“Shut up and accept the compliment, ass.”

“I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Katie for yelling about soft Jareau-Prentiss family headcannons with me at the ungodly hours of the morning.  
Double thanks to Alex for editing this even though she has no interest in criminal minds!  
Follow me on twitter @WhoopsItsGay where I yell about Scooby Doo, criminal minds, and other gay stuff.


End file.
